India has a huge opportunity to work on aspects like transforming total costs of running a network and demonstrating leadership as 5G adoption gains traction across the globe, a top Facebook executive said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the India Mobile Congress 2020, Facebook Vice President Dan Rabinovitsj said the group's focus is on getting more people online to a faster internet, and collaborating with partners in the ecosystem to help transform the underlying economics of developing and operating telecom networks.
"...one of the biggest opportunities is how do I transform the total costs of running and owning a network, which I think is one of the great opportunities for India to leapfrog the rest of the world," he said.
Rabinovitsj further stated that India has talent density in this domain, and it is an opportunity to "demonstrate leadership here in a way that you know we haven't seen in the past".
He noted that deployment of 5G has a number of use cases for enterprises.
"If you're looking at factory automation and you need to be able to control robotic arms or just have very accurate control systems or IoT (internet of things) systems in place that are latency sensitive, 5G can be really really helpful," he said.
He added that enterprises will be willing to pay a premium looking at the application and use cases.
Randeep Sekhon, chief technology officer at Bharti Airtel, said 5G is an "expensive proposition" for operators to build up and therefore good use cases and affordable handsets are needed for mass adoption of 5G in a country like India.
"...operators need to work together along with government, regulators and OEMs (device makers) to make this a success in India, and a good start is very important," he added.
